Thursday 26 September 2013

18th Sunday after Pentecost 22 Sep 2013 Sermon

18th Sunday after Pentecost 22.9.13 Full healing

Our Lord demonstrates by a physical miracle (the healing of the paralysed man) that He has the power over creation to make things happen.

If He can make a sick man get up and walk there is a strong indication that He also has power to go further still – to change things at the spiritual level; to reconcile the creature with the Creator.

And He does claim this power. Your sins are forgiven. Who is he to forgive sin, the critics ask. He has the right to forgive because all creation is under His authority, including all human life and its interior secrets. It is all His domain, His territory.

So He has the right and the power to reconcile us with God; to re-create us from within; a marvellous moment of healing - as anyone who has ever been forgiven for a major sin or a lifetime of sin can testify.

The ultimate purpose of our existence is to know, love, and serve God; and to live with Him in heaven. God always meant this for us. When we do not know, love or serve Him He takes steps to bring us to where we need to be. He draws us to Himself through offers and demonstrations of His love.

Whenever we repent of our sin He willingly forgives and reconciles us to Himself. At that point we come back to life. Our spiritual health is restored.

Today many take for granted that they are in God’s favour; that He loves them and therefore will forgive whatever they do, regardless. But it is not so simple.

He loves us, certainly; but we may not love Him. His love cannot change but our love for Him is damaged whenever we sin, and it needs to be restored.

The deeper our contrition the more effectively we can be forgiven and reconciled.

When we sin we do not mean to offend Almighty God, but we do all the same. When we realize this dimension of our sin we seek to be fully re-united with Him. We have effectively stopped loving Him for the time being and we need to re-light the candle, to bring back life to our souls.

With this goes a prayer that we will remember more clearly the next time that we owe Him everything and therefore will be less inclined to sin.

Having been restored to life we are determined to stay alive and to become more so. Thus we resolve not only to avoid sin but to take every chance for doing good and increasing our union with God. Our love for Him can increase, and it should.

We no longer see our faith as just living by the rules. We still keep the rules but not in a grudging way. We come to see that they express the mind of God, to which we are becoming attuned.

I want to do exactly the same things He wants me to do. I would not sin for all the world. This is what the saints demonstrate to us.

We can all move closer to Him than we are now.

We ask for the mercy that will repair our relationship with Him, that will enable us to love Him perfectly - in theory and practice; in word and deed; the coming together of what I know and what I do; the full integration of the person, symbolised by the miracle of today’s Gospel. The man was fixed in body and soul, and sent packing. So we seek for ourselves.

We understand that bodily healing is not always God’s will for us, but it never hurts to ask for it. We know that the healing of the soul is always His will, and we ask for that too; that He bring us to life, fully united with Himself.

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